Crypto· Bitcoin

SHRINCS BIP published: Quantum-secure Bitcoin comes with a catch

Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back has a reputation as a quantum computer skeptic who believes the technology is so immature the threat won’t materialize for decades. Which makes it all the more fascinating that his company is one of the leaders in researching practical solutions to the issue.

By AI NewsroomPublished 1 day agoUpdated about 2 hours ago7 views

SHRINCS BIP published: Quantum-secure Bitcoin comes with a catch

Why It Matters

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Key Facts

Fact 1: The current crop of post-quantum secure hash and lattice-based signature schemes endorsed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology are between 38 and 123 times larger than Bitcoin’s existing ECDSA and Schnorr signatures.
Fact 2: Deploying any of them in Bitcoin could slow the blockchain down to a fraction of 1 TPS.
Fact 3: Blockstream is considering that option too, but has wisely separated the proposal from the much more palatable option of figuring out how to shrink the size of NIST-approved hash based post-quantum signatures by around 13.23 times.
Fact 4: Bitcoin optimized small(er) signatures In December 2025, Blockstream researchers Jonas Nick and Mikhail Kudinov unveiled the SHRINCS signature scheme, and the opcode proposal was published in May.

Back told Cointelegraph earlier this year “the safe thing” is to prepare for the threat well in advance. Blockstream has already proven its experimental post-quantum signature scheme called SHRINCS works in production on its Liquid sidechain and a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal for SHRINCS was published earlier today. Blockstream Research’s Jonas Nick called it “the first concrete proposal for a post-quantum signature scheme designed specifically for Bitcoin.” But he added that “SHRINCS is not intended to be Bitcoin’s ‘final’ signature scheme, and it is not optimal along every axis.

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